Here’s a review of my reading material during 2021. I am so grateful to the local library for saving me a small fortune on many of these books, ones that I’ll never read again and don’t have space for on my shelves.
- Absolutely outstanding *****
- Very good ****
- A decent read ***
- Hmm, OK **
- Don't bother *
Systematic Theology - An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine [2nd Edition] (Wayne Grudem) *****
Is there anything that
sounds drier, more boring and less desirable to read than a very large book
with a title like this? And yet, it is brilliant. I read the first edition when
it came out in 1994 and this fully revised and expanded (1,435 pages plus
appendices and indices - 16% longer) is absolutely worth every last penny of
the £49.99 I shelled out for it. This is a clear, non-technical, detailed and meticulous exploration of every major biblical theme; fifty-seven
chapters covering God, his word, creation, humanity in the image of God, sin, redemption,
the church and the future. Not only is the emphasis of this book thoroughly
Reformed, it is also, as far as I know, unique among Systematic Theologies in being
frankly and persuasively supportive of the charismatic ministry of the Holy
Spirit in the church today. So, for example, chapter 20 on Satan and Demons not
only explains the scriptural basis for their origin and activity, it gives very
practical instruction on how to cast out an evil spirit in the unfortunate and annoying event that
you encounter one. This is a very helpful reference book to consult when virtually
any biblical question arises. But, though it’ll take you weeks to wade through
it, it can also be read from start to finish, filling the mind and warming the heart with the greatness of God and wonders of his grace.
The Bible Speaks Today - The Message of Joshua (David Firth) ****
Unless I’m mistaken, this was the very last in the BST series to be
published (in 2015). No wonder, Joshua is a very challenging book with its main theme of Israel’s ruthless and merciless conquest of Canaan. There is an awful lot of smiting
which of course deeply troubles the modern mind and gives atheists and
secularists plenty of ammunition to attack the Bible as a bad book. Of course,
it all seems so inconsistent with the God who so loved the world, revealed in
Jesus. David Firth readily acknowledges all this and does a good job guiding
his readers through the narrative, constantly pointing to its spiritual relevance
for followers of Christ, the Prince of Peace. I found this a really helpful
accompaniment to my daily Bible reading. It helped me make my peace with the
“problem passages” and appreciate the message of Joshua for me in 2021.
The Firm (John Grisham) ****
Grisham’s 1991 breakthrough legal thriller about a top-paying tax law firm tucked away in Memphis that turns out to be a front for the mafia. The firm taps its lawyers’ phones, bugs their houses and cars, and ruthlessly eliminates anyone who talks to the Feds. Gripping plot, classic Grisham. My library copy was a 25th Anniversary edition with an introduction by the author, where he reveals that, after poor sales of his first book, he was going to call it a day on his writing career, but a bootleg copy of the manuscript of The Firm found its way to a Hollywood production company who snapped up the film rights. The film of this book, starring Tom Cruise, launched Grisham to fame and, thankfully, the rest is history.
The Bible Speaks Today - The Message of Joel, Micah and Habakkuk (David Prior) ***
I
read this at three points during the year, starting with Micah, to assist me in
my daily Bible reading. The prophets are arguably the most difficult and
obscure section of scripture for modern readers and Prior’s reflections really
help to illuminate the text. A tiny bit long-winded at times, it could have been more ruthlessly edited, but it is basically a
sound read.
Paul for Everyone - The Pastoral Epistles (Tom Wright) **
I
found this title in Tom Wright’s For Everyone series a little tiresome
to be honest. Too often, I found the plain and clear meaning of a passage given
a patronising pat on the head and amended by a “well yes, but Paul’s real point is…” kind of comment. Overall, it left me with the impression that the Bible is essentially the domain of experts with
inside knowledge who dispense it to the hoi polloi. I do not mean to
disparage scholarly study (the next book to be reviewed shows I appreciate it very
much) but there is something about John Wycliffe’s belief that the Bible should
be read and understood by every humble ploughboy that seemed a bit out of
reach while reading this book.
The Bible Speaks Today - The Message of 2 Timothy (John Stott) ****
By
contrast this book just amplified and clarified what would appear to most as
the plain meaning of scripture. I just love John Stott’s writings. He was an
absolute giant of evangelical scholarship and the church needs more like him
today. This is one of the earliest BST books (1973) regrettably in the days
before inclusive language became standard in English which you really notice. But, otherwise, this is an
excellent companion to 2 Timothy. Clear and readable, it helps bring forth the
many treasures of Paul’s last letter, written from prison shortly before the
great apostle was executed and martyred.
The Appeal (John Grisham) ***
Unfortunately
for impatient readers, Grisham doesn’t get round to the actual appeal referenced
in the title until you’ve read 90% of the book. The appeal is against a
decisive jury verdict finding a chemical firm to have been grossly negligent,
leading to a spate of cancer deaths. Leading up to the appeal is a coordinated
campaign financed by big business to get their candidate onto the Mississippi
Supreme Court. All just in time to potentially overturn a $41 million award against
an obviously guilty defendant. Though this is a work of fiction, it does leave
you wondering how on earth appointments to the judiciary can be allowed to get
so politicised.
Living the Dream - Joseph for Today: A Dramatic Exposition of Genesis 37-50 (Pete Wilcox) ****
This
is a really good exposition of the story of Joseph including a
full text from Genesis. Wilcox’s depth of engagement with scripture is excellent
and his commentary on the story is insightful. It’s a pity therefore
that Wilcox repeatedly compares the narrative with mainstream churches in the
west in the 21st Century as they meet the twin challenge of
declining attendance and splits over human sexuality. The two are surely not
comparable. Whereas Joseph’s eventual blessing and fruitfulness is tied to his countercultural
obedience in adversity, the problems besetting many churches today are, in my
view, directly related to espousing revisionist ethics and drifting from the
anchors of God’s word.
Exploring the Moon - The Apollo Expeditions (David M. Harland) ****
Harland’s
scholarly 400-page survey of what the moon landings discovered is very thorough
and mostly non-technical, though I learned quite a few geological terms as I
waded through this book. It covers data from the unmanned, pre-Apollo landers
and post-Apollo probes, but it skips through them and the one-day Apollo 11 and
12 missions quite briefly. Harland devotes the lion’s share of his book to the longer
Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions situated in the much more geologically
diverse Fra Mauro highlands, Hadley Apennine, Descartes-Cayley and Taurus-Littrow
valley. With constant reference to astronaut transcripts that makes you feel
like you’re there with them, this book, more than any other I’ve read, explains
how exploration of the Moon has shed light the formation and evolution of Earth,
for which much ancient ‘smoking gun’ geological data has long been eroded and
recycled by plate tectonics.
The Brethren (John Grisham) ***
Not your absolute classic Grisham, but a decent page-turner nonetheless. Three disgraced former judges, now inmates in an open prison, run an extortion scam that unwittingly uncovers a major scandal involving the CIA-backed frontrunner in the presidential race. So the spooks get involved and a modest little extortion racket becomes a multi-million dollar affair where anyone who knows too much is in danger of mysteriously going missing.
A Life in Football – My Autobiography (Ian Wright) ***
Ian Wright is an Arsenal legend, so whatever he wrote in his autobiography I know I’d enjoy it. It’s a quite moving story of a man with so few prospects; absent father, apathetic mother, bad influences on the Brockley housing estate he grew up on, inexplicably overlooked at every football trial he went on and ending up working as a labourer on a building site at 16. But football was his outlet and, at age 22, Crystal Palace offer him a trial after someone spots him tearing up Sunday league football. The rest is history. The usual inside story from the dressing room but also the TV studio and some shocking insights about how endemic racism is in the game.
The Essential Difference - Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (Simon Baron-Cohen) ****
A bit of an irony that this is classed under
‘popular psychology’ because of course it is not popular at all to suggest that
men and women are essentially different from each other. I should point out that Cambridge
Professor Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen’s claim is for the average male and the average
female as he carefully explains (and demonstrates via tons of research) how and
why men are better systemisers and women are better empathisers. And this is not to do with environmental factors. Even new-born boys and girls display differences on the systemiser-empathiser scale whilst still in the maternity ward. The chapter on
biology is a revelation, especially what it says about hormones. I got a bit
emotional towards the end when he discussed autism as the extreme male brain;
very low on empathy, very high on systemising. Off the scale brilliant but
teased at school for being a bit weird. I saw my son Joseph in every paragraph
and it broke my heart.
Wow. Totally exhilarating journey through Mark’s Gospel in 60 bite-sized chunks. Packed with brilliant illustrations, Phil Moore sees so much in the text culturally, geographically and linguistically. It’s like watching a black and white photo morph into colour and 3-D. What a gifted Bible teacher. Only one tiny, weeny complaint; the often fascinating insights found in the many footnotes would be easier to follow if they were included in the main text - but that’s not enough to downgrade this from the five-star rating I give it.
89
- Arsenal’s Greatest Moment, Told in Our Own Words (Amy Lawrence) ****
Relive
the dramatic last game of the 1989 English football season. This is an unusual
football book for two reasons: 1) because every word of it, apart from excerpts
from Brian Moore’s ITV commentary and a list of the 96 Liverpool fans who died
at Hillsbrough a few weeks earlier, is personal testimony and recollection from
players, coaching staff, match officials, journalists, fans who were there from both
clubs and fans who weren’t. And 2) because no end to a football season has ever
- or will ever - or can ever - possibly match this one for jeopardy, drama, suspense or emotion. Journalist
and superfan Amy Lawrence does a sterling job of putting it all together.
Mother
Tongue - The Story of the English Language (Bill Bryson) ***
This is a pretty thorough survey of English; its origins, evolution, quirks, variability, global reach and possible future charted by one of its finest contemporary speakers, the Bard of Des Moines, Bill Bryson. Though not one of Bryson’s absolute must reads (see Notes from a Small Island, Neither Here nor There, A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Body) it is definitely worth your time, though in truth there is much here that is factually debatable. In discussing names of Britain’s 70,000 pubs I enjoyed this gem; “Almost any name will do as long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing, and enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners – this is a basic requirement of most British institutions – and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal. Among the pubs that meet, and indeed exceed, these exacting standards are the Frog and Nightgown, the Bull and Spectacles, the Flying Monk, and the Crab and Gumboil.”
Completing Luther’s Reformation (David Pawson) ***
A short book based on four talks by David Pawson a few years before he died in 2020. Pawson was a superb Bible teacher and lateral thinker. He used to call himself an unorthodox evangelical and that’s absolutely right but not at all in the sense of doctrinally unsound. I found myself saying ‘amen’ time and time again when reading this. Luther famously recovered the doctrine of justification by faith but failed to disassociate the church from the state, which hamstrings Lutheran and Anglican churches today, confusing sheep with goats. Luther also preserved the clergy/laity divide, a legacy from the Roman Catholic church which deprives the church of an authentic priesthood of all believers. And he kept infant baptism too, which is hard to defend as the plain meaning of Scripture. However, Pawson’s thoughts on Israel and remarriage after divorce need more nuance in my opinion. There are some amazing faith-stirring anecdotes in here too but it could - and should - have been much better edited for publication from the spoken word.
Joseph – A Story of Love, Hate, Slavery, Power and Forgiveness (John Lennox) ****
The second book I read this year about Joseph, they were both good but this one was marginally the better of the two in my opinion. One third of the book traces important themes in Genesis 1-36 as Joseph’s family history will have strongly shaped his understanding of the world growing up. Lennox explores the text of chapters 37-50 in some detail, bringing light onto many curiosities in the story, not least the game of cat and mouse Joseph played with his brothers before revealing himself to them. The book is also excellent for its many thoughtful pastoral applications.
Van Morrison: No Surrender (Johnny Rogan) ***
At 498 pages (plus glossary, discography, index and 96 pages of notes in a smaller font) you’d be forgiven for wondering if this is actually two books. Actually, it sort of is. It’s both a painstakingly researched biography of musician and singer Van Morrison and a commentary of the complex political environment surrounding the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Rogan connects the two by portraying Van Morrison throughout as another Ian Paisley. While it’s true that both men are intransigent, belligerent, obdurate figures with an unmistakable voice and who rise to prominence at roughly the same time in East Belfast, I’m not sure there’s enough in that to make it the overriding motif of this biography. If this book were a railway journey, the train takes ages to pull out of the station and reach cruising speed; we don’t get to Astral Weeks until page 212. Still, Rogan does a decent job of chronicling Morrison's prolific and brilliant career (up to Magic Time) though he, like everyone else, fails to really get beneath the impenetrable armour of Morrison’s surly, prickly, erratic and at times explosive personality.
Did you know that 99.9% of species that ever
existed are now extinct? One of the fascinating facts in this absorbing book. Leakey’s
parents are famous for their studies in human origins but Richard Leakey is more in conservationist mode than paleontologist mode here. I found much to agree with in this book. I
also found a lot to disagree with; Leakey’s assertion that homo sapiens is ‘an
accident of history’ for example. This book fails to satisfactorily account for
1) the sudden appearance of many thousands of entirely new life forms in the
Cambrian era, achieved in a heartbeat of geological time, and 2) the mystifying
scarcity of intermediate fossils between species, two things Darwin noted and hoped
would be resolved with a more complete fossil record than the one he knew. So nothing
here persuades me that I should give up being an old earth creationist (I
should add that I accept evolution by natural selection as a major - but not
the only - mechanism in the formation and development of life on earth). The
fossil record reveals that there have been five huge extinction catastrophes in
our planet’s history and Leakey contends that we are living in a sixth, one which could conceivably see the end of our own species. He argues that this current great extinction event is almost
exclusively wrought by ourselves, before asking whether or not it matters to us
if 50% of the earth’s species might disappear by the end of the 21st Century. He admits that his projection is speculative and contested, but I found his
thesis persuasive. And, yes, it really does matter.
Life on the Edge: The True Story of the Hero who
Saved the Lives of 29 People at Beachy Head (Keith Lane) **
This is a short summary of how the dedication of one man, following his wife’s suicide at Beachy Head, helped dissuade others from jumping to their death from the same notorious East Sussex cliff face. He reveals how his wife’s fatal jump led him to such a dark place that he almost followed her on the first anniversary of her death while he was actively trying every day to prevent strangers from ending it all. There is much to learn and absorb here about the pathways of despair and loneliness in a season of grief. Some clearly saw Lane as a maverick who, due to the publicity that inevitably followed him, actually drew attention to the location as a prime suicide site and unwittingly made the situation worse. Lane disputes this and the statistics he quotes would appear to back him up. He is critical of others involved in the field; notably the local council, a Christian volunteer force, and a jobsworth coastguard and police service, especially over what he sees as an inflexible approach to health and safety - and on this I did sympathise with him. To be fair, this is of course only his side of the story and I suspect others might have a slightly different perspective on the disagreements he sometimes had with other agencies. Lane also writes positively about some strange experiences with spiritualists following his wife's death that leave little doubt that some of them certainly are in touch with spiritual realities (from a Christian perspective, dark and nefarious ones, however comforting they might feel at first). It's for this reason that I would not recommend this book to others.
